The Mother: A Novel

by Pearl S. Buck

  Then the mother answered hastily, “Oh, aye, I know that—” and fell silent for a time and then after a while she said unwillingly, “It is true she is a careful woman, clean and almost too clean and scraping out the pot so often I swear she wastes the food with so much washing of the oil jar and the like. And she washes herself every little time or so, and it may be this is why she goes barren. Too much washing is not always well.”

  But she spoke no more of heats, for she feared to have the cousin’s wife bring up again that old ill done, although the cousin’s wife was the kindest soul and never all these years had made a difference of it, and if she had even told her man then the mother never knew she did. If it had not been for these two sorrows that she had, the blind maid and that her son had no sons, she might have forgotten it herself, so far away the days of her flesh seemed now. Yes, she might have forgotten it if she had not feared it had been sin and these two sorrows the punishment for it.

  But there her life was, and the maid was blind and gone now and there was no child, and only the beasts about and the dog and even these she dared not feed.

  There was only this good thing nowadays, she thought, and it was that her two sons did not quarrel so much. The elder was satisfied and master in the house, and the younger had his own place somewhere, and when he came home and went away again, the most the elder son did was to say with feeble scorn, “I wonder where my brother gets those good clothes he wears and what the work is that he does. I cannot wear clothes like his and I work bitterly. He seems to have money somehow. I hope he is not in some band of town thieves or something that will drag us into trouble if he is caught.”

  Then the mother flew up bravely as she always did for her little son and she said, “A very good younger brother, my son, and you should praise him and be glad he has gone and found a thing to do for himself and not stayed here to share the land with you!”

  And the elder son said sneeringly, “Oh, aye, he would do anything I swear to keep from labor on the land.”

  But the son’s wife said nothing. She was pleased these days because the house was all her own and it was naught to her what the young man did, and she did not complain because he bought his clothes elsewhere now and she needed not to make them for him.

  So the time went on and spring came and passed and early summer came and still the mother never could forget her maid. One day she sat counting on her fingers the days since that one when she saw the hill cut the maid off from her sight, and it was more than twelve times all the fingers on her hands and then she lost the count, and so she thought sadly, “I must go to her. I have let this old heaviness weigh on me and I ought to have gone before. If she had been a sound maid she would have come by now to pay the visit that wives do to their old homes, and I could have asked her how she did and felt her hands and arms and cheeks and seen the color of her face.”

  And the mother sat and looked at those hills around and saw how the summer came on to its full height and every hillside was green and all the grain high in the fields, and she forced her body that was weary always now even though she was idle all the livelong day, and she thought, “I must go and see my maid and I will go at once, seeing I am not needed on the land and here I sit idle. I will go and before the great heat comes, lest my flux drop on me again unaware. Yes—I will go this very tomorrow since there is no sign of cloud in this fair sky—this blue sky—” she looked up at the sky and saw how blue it was and remembered suddenly as she did nowadays some bit of her life long gone, and she remembered the blue robe her man had bought once and that he wore away and she sighed and thought with some dim old pang, “On such a day as this he bought the robe and we quarreled—on just such a fair day, for I remember the robe was the color of the sky that day.” She sighed and rose to drive the thought away and when her elder son came she said restlessly, “I think to go and see your sister tomorrow, and how she does in the house where she was wed, seeing she cannot come to me.”

  Then the son said, anxiously, “Mother, I cannot go with you now, for there is work to do tomorrow. Wait until the harvest is over and the grain threshed and measured, and I have a little free time.”

  But suddenly the mother could not wait. There was strength in her a plenty yet when she had something she set her mind to do, and she was weary of her idleness and sitting and she said, “No, I will go tomorrow!”

  And the son said, worried still and he was always easily worried if aught came that was sudden and out of the common and he could not think what to do quickly, “But how will you go, mother?”

  She said, “Why, I will ride my cousin’s ass if he will lend it, and do you bid a lad of his to go and call your brother to walk beside and lead the ass, and we will go safe enough, the two of us, for there are no robbers near these days that I have heard tell of, except that new kind in the town they call the communists, who do not harm the poor, they say—”

  At last the son was willing, though not too easily and not until his wife said quietly, “It is true I cannot see any great danger if the younger one goes with her.”

  So they let the mother have her way at last, and the cousin’s lad was sent to town to search until he found the younger son and so he did and came back wide-eyed and said, “My cousin and your second son will come, aunt.” And then he thought a while and twisted the button on his coat and said again, “I swear it is a strange and secret place where he lives and a hard place to find. He lives in a long room full of beds, some twenty beds or so above a shop, and the room is filled with books and papers. But he does not work in the shop for I asked him. I did not know my cousin could read, aunt. If he reads those books he must be very learned.”

  “He cannot read,” the mother said astonished. “He never told me that he lived by books, a very strange odd thing, I swear! I must ask him of it.”

  The next day when she was on the ass and they went winding through the valleys she took the chance of being alone with him and she did ask her son, “What are those books and papers that my cousin’s son says you have in that room where you all live? You never told me you could read or that you live by books. I never saw you read a word, my son.”

  Then the young man stopped the little song he had been singing as they went for he had a good voice to sing and loved to sing, and he said, “Aye, I have learned a little.” And when she pressed him further he said, evading her, “Mother, do not ask me now, for some day you will know everything and when the hour comes. A great day, mother, and I was singing of it just now, a song we sing together where I work, and on that day we shall all be eased, and there shall be no more rich and no more poor and all of us shall have the same.”

  Now this was the wildest talk the mother had ever heard, for well she knew heaven wills who shall be rich and who shall be poor, and men have naught to say but take their destiny and bear it, and she cried out afraid, “I hope you are not in some wicked company, my son, not with thieves or some such company! It sounds the way robbers talk, my son! There is no other way for poor to be rich than that, and it is ill to be rich and lose your life if you be caught at it!”

  But the young man grew angry at this and said, “Mother, you do not understand at all! I am sworn to silence now, but some day you shall know. Yes, I shall not forget you on that day. But only you. I will not share with any who have not shared with me.” This last he said so loudly that she knew he felt against his brother and so she was silent for a while, fearing to rouse his wrath.

  But she could not let him be. She sat as bid upon the ass and clung to the beast’s hairy skin and thought about this son and looked at him secretly. There he walked ahead of her, the beast’s halter in his hand, and now he was singing again, some song she had never heard, some beating fiery song whose words she could not catch, and she thought to herself that she must know more of his life. Yes, and she must bind him somehow more closely to his home and to them all. She would wed him and have his wife there in the house. Then would he often come and even live there, perhaps, for the wi
fe’s sake. She would seek and find a pretty, touching maid whom he could love, for the elder son’s wife could do the work, and she would find another sort for this son. And as she thought of this her heart was eased because it seemed a good way and she could not keep it back and so she said, “Son, you are more than twenty now, and near to twenty-one, and I think to wed you soon. How is that for a merry thing?”

  But who can tell what a young man’s heart will be? Instead of smiling silence, half pleased and half ashamed, he stopped and turned and said to her most willfully, “I have been waiting for you to say some such thing—it is all that mothers’ heads run upon, I do believe! My comrades tell me it is the chiefest thing their parents say—wed—wed—wed! Well then, mother, I will not wed! And if you wed me against my will, then shall you never see my face again! I never will come home again!”

  He turned and went on more quickly and she dared not say a word, but only sat amazed and frightened at his anger and that he did not sing again.

  Yet she forgot all this now in what was to come. The path along which they had come since early dawn grew narrower and more narrow toward noon, and those hills which around their own valleys were so gently shaped, so mild in their round curves against the sky and so green with grass and bamboo, rose now as they went among them into sharper, bolder lines. At last when noon was full and the sun poured its heat down straight the gentle hills were gone, and in their place rose a range of mountains bare and rocky and cruelly pointed against the sky. They seemed the sharper too because the sky that day was so cloudless, bright and hard and blue, above the sand color of the bare mountains.

  Beneath great pale cliffs the path wound, the stones not black and dark, but pale as light in hue and very strange, and nothing grew there, for there was no water anywhere. So the path wound up and yet more up and when noon was passed an hour or two, they came suddenly into a round deep valley in the mountain tops, and there some water was, for there was a small square village enclosed about with a rocky wall, and about it the green of a few fields. But when the mother and her son stopped at the gate to that village and asked of the place they sought, one who stood there pointed yet higher to a ridge and said, “There where the green ends on that lower edge there are the two houses. It is the last edge of green, and above it there are only rocks and sky.”

  Now all this time the mother had stared astonished at these mountains and at their strange wild shapes and paleness, and at the scanty green. She had spent her life in the midst of valleys, and now as the path wound up from the enclosed village she stared about aghast to see how mortally poor the land was here and how shallow on the pale rocks the soil was and how scanty all the crops, even now when harvest drew on, and she cried out to the youth, “I do not like the looks of this place, son! I doubt it is too hard a place for your sister. Well, we will take her home, then. Yes, if it is too hard for her here I can walk and we will put her on the ass, and let them say what they will. They paid nothing for her, and I will ask nothing but her back again.”

  But the young man did not answer. He was weary and hungry, for they had eaten but a bit of cold food they had brought with them, and he longed to reach his sister’s house, for there they thought to spend the night. He pulled at the ass’s bridle until the mother could not bear it and was about to brave his anger and reprove him.

  Suddenly they came upon that house. Yes, there the two houses were, caught upon the side of the ridge and stuck there somehow to the rocks, and the mother knew this was where her maid was, for there the ill-looking old man stood at the door of one of the two houses, and when he saw her he stared as if he could not believe it was she, and then he ran in and out came more people, another man, dark and lean and wild in looks, and two women and a slack-hung youth, but not her blind maid.

  The mother came down from her ass then and went near, and all these stared at her in silence, and she looked back and was afraid. Never had she seen such looks as these, the women’s hair uncombed and full of burrs and their faces withered and blackened with the sun, their garments never washed, and so were they all. They gathered there and out of the other house came a sickly child or two, yellowed with some fever, their lips parched and broken, and their bodies foul with filth, and they all stared silently, and gave no greeting, their eyes as wild and reasonless as beasts’ eyes are.

  Then did the mother’s heart break suddenly with fear and she ran forward crying, “Where is my maid? Where have you hid my maid?” And she ran into their midst, but the young man stood doubting and holding to the ass.

  Then a woman spoke sullenly, and her speech was not easily understood, some rude northern speech it was, and the sounds caught between her broken teeth and nothing came out clear and she said, “You have come well, goodwife. She has just died today.”

  “Died!” the mother whispered and said no more. Her heart stopped, her breath was gone, she had no voice. But she pushed into the nearest hut and there upon a bed of reeds thrown on the ground her blind maid lay. Aye, there the maid was lying quietly and dead, dressed in the same clothes she had when she left her home, but not clean now nor mended. Of those new things there was no trace, for the room was empty save for the heap of rushes and a rude stool or two.

  Then the mother ran and knelt beside her maid and stared down at the still face and sunken eyes and at the patient little mouth and all the face she knew so well. And suddenly she burst out crying and she fell upon the maid and seized her hands and pushed the ragged sleeves back and looked at her little arms and drew the trousers up her legs and looked to see if they were bruised or beaten or harmed in any way.

  But there was nothing. No, the maid’s soft skin was all unbroken, the slender bones whole, and there was nothing to be seen. She was pale and piteously thin, but she was thin always and death is pale. Then did the mother stoop and smell at the child’s lips to see if there was any smell of poison, but there was no smell, nothing now except the faint sad scent of death.

  Yet somehow the mother could not believe that this was any good and usual death. She turned on those who stood about the door watching her in silence, and she looked at them and saw their wild rude faces, not one of which she knew, and she shouted at them through sudden great weeping, “You have killed her—well I know you have—if you did not, then tell me how did my maid die so soon, and she left me sound and well!”

  Then the evil old man whom she had hated from the first time she saw him grinned and said, “Be careful how you speak, goodwife! It is not a small thing to say we killed her and—”

  But the sullen, rough-haired woman broke in screaming, “How did she die? She died of a cold she caught, being so puny, and that is how she died!” And she spat upon the ground and said again, screeching as she said, “A useless maid she was, too, if there was one, and knowing nothing—no, she could not even learn to fetch the water from the spring and not stumble and fall or lose her way!”

  Then the mother looked and saw a narrow stony path leading down the mountain to a small pool and she groaned and cried, “Is that the way you mean?” But no one answered her and she cried out in further agony, “You beat her—doubtless every day my maid was beaten!”

  But the woman answered quickly, “Search and see if there be bruises on her! Once my son did beat her for she came to him too slowly, but that is all!”

  The mother looked up then and said faintly, “Where is your son?” And they pushed him forward, that son they had, and there he stood, a gangling, staring lad, and the mother saw he was nearly witless.

  Then did the mother lay her head down upon her dead maid and weep and weep most wildly, and more wildly still she wept when she thought of what the maid had suffered, must have suffered, at such hands as these. And while she wept the anger grew about her in those who watched her. At last she felt a touch upon her and looking up she saw it was her son, and he bent and whispered to her urgently, “Mother, We are in danger here—I am afraid—we must not stay. Mother, she is dead now and what more can you do? But they l
ook so evil I do not know what they will do to us. Come and let us hasten to the village and buy a little food and then press on home tonight!”

  The mother rose then unwillingly, but as she looked she saw it was true those people stood together close, and there was that about them to make her fear, too, and she did not like their muttering nor the looks they cast at her and at the youth. Yes, she must think of him. Let them kill her if they would, but there was her son.

  She turned and looked down once more at her dead maid and put her garments neat and laid her hands to her side. She went out into the late afternoon. When they saw her calmer and that she made ready to mount the ass again, the man, who had not spoken yet, and who was father to the witless son, said, “Look you, goodwife, if you do not think us honest folk, look at the coffin we have bought your child. Ten pieces of silver did it cost us, and all we had, and do you think we would have bought a coffin if we had not valued her?”

  The mother looked then, and there beside the door a coffin truly was, but well she knew there were not ten pieces of silver in it, for it was but the rudest box of unpainted board, and thin well-nigh as paper and such a box as any pauper has. She opened her lips to make angry answer and to say, “That box? But my maid’s own silver that I gave her would have paid for that!”

  But she did not say the words. It came upon her like a chill cloud across the day that she had need to fear these people. Yes, these two evil men, these wild women—but there her son was tugging at her sleeve to hasten her and so she answered steadily, “I will say nothing now. The maid is dead and not all the angers in the world nor any words can bring her back again.” She paused and looked at this one and at that and then she said again, “Before heaven do you stand and all the gods, and let them judge you, whatever you have done!”